affluenza

I sometimes read The Housing Bubble Blog to keep up with what's been going on with the housing market. I am continually amazed at how often the "tale of woe" shared by people going into foreclosure is often due to greed rather than need. Consider the following story:

“In 2005, Jenni and Ryan Kroon traded the 1,100-square-foot, three-bedroom, two-bath home in Boise they shared with their two children for a 3,500-square-foot, seven-bedroom, four-bath home in Nampa that cost $200,000*. Although financed with a 30-year, fixed-rate loan, the move still tripled their monthly mortgage payment to about $2,100.”

If you ever wonder why I get critical of the "get rich quick" self-help people, here's a really good example:

'Flip This House' star accused of fraud

On an episode of A&E's popular reality series "Flip This House," Atlanta businessman Sam Leccima sits in front of a run-down house and calls buying and selling real estate his passion.

Now authorities and legal filings claim that Leccima's true passion was a series of scams that included faking the home renovations shown on the cable TV show and claiming to have sold houses he never owned.

I had an opportunity to see Michele Blood speak earlier in the week. She is the singing Australian self-help guru who has for years teamed up with Bob Proctor, one of the main guys on The Secret DVD. I enjoyed her talk, if just for the fact that she liked to throw the F-word in there a lot, and didn't seem to take herself too seriously.

What struck me was her comments on the issue of manifesting money. She mentioned briefly that sometimes she gets criticized for her focus on wealth. She said something along the lines of: "If you want to accomplish anything, you need the energy of money behind you, and so I don't apologize for that." (I am completely paraphrasing here.)

Hmm. Well, yes, I certainly would like more money, as it would make my life easier in many respects. But do we need to be wealthy in order to achieve anything?

Today was way too hot in Los Angeles. It got to be around 90 degrees on the Westside, and I have no air conditioning, because usually I don't need it with the ocean breeze. I had an errand to run in Venice Beach, so I parked my car and walked down to the sand.

When I hit the water, I immediately saw an entire cavalcade of dolphins playing in the surf. They were splashing around and body surfing in the crashing waves. Children were there with families along the beach. During my walk, a tiny 3 or 4-year-old girl and her smaller brother almost pounced upon me in at the water's edge, grinning and shrieking and happy as pie. "Are you having fun???" she asked me...or, I think she asked me, because she was young enough to be somewhat intelligible, and the surf was loud.

Since I've been very critical of The Secret, every once in a while I will poke around Joe Vitale's blog and comment here or there. (I will also freely acknowledge that his blog gets a lot of traffic, and posting there is a bit of guerrilla marketing on my part.)

Joe, as you might remember, was the guy in The Secret who likened the universe to one big cosmic catalog that you could order a Ferrari from at will. He recently wrote a post in his blog, Thresholds: Is it serving or selling? Here, he gives the typical response to people who criticize the materialism of The Secret, suggesting that those who have a problem with it are just feeling "undeserving."